The Roses Had No Chance
by methylethyl
Summary: Ianto takes his team out to investigate disappearances in the countryside. Sequel to The Stars Might Stick You Where You Stand.


**The Roses Had No Chance**

Ianto has no idea what possessed him to drag his team out to go camping. It's not like he enjoys camping—Ianto is a hedonist when no one's looking, as much as anyone can be in a century that's still primarily dressing in sheep sheerings—and it's not like anyone on the team particularly enjoys camping (though Jack's excited because he thinks he'll be wangling his way into sharing a tent with Ianto, and Gwen's excited about the marshmallows she thinks Ianto doesn't know she snuck along).

Ianto's only valid reason for dragging his team out to the Welsh countryside is that he's hoping to promote team bonding or some such.

But by the time Owen has complained for the entirety of the drive, unloading, and setting up of the tents, Ianto is really, really over this bonding lark. He thinks he might be on more of a firing kick now, to be perfectly honest, especially when he overhears the little game Gwen's started up.

"Tosh, your go," Gwen says.

Tosh protests, but eventually Gwen gets her to come out with, "…Owen."

Ianto pauses from behind the tents, surprised.

"What?" says Owen.

"Ooo-ee!" Jack crows. "Tosh, you _minx_."

"In your dreams, Tosh," Owen snaps.

"It was three a.m, Christmas Eve, in front of the Millennium Centre, waiting for a cab. I had mistletoe."

"Was there tongue?" Jack asks eagerly.

"Obviously not. If there'd been tongue, I'd have remembered it," Owen snarks.

"What's yours then, Owen?" Gwen asks quickly.

"A _very_ lovely girl named Ana. Legs from here to Glasgow."

"Was the snogging included, or did you pay extra for that?"

"Fuck off, Harkness. Bet you don't even know the name of your last snog, you slag."

"I do!"

Alarmed, Ianto nearly trips over the tent in his haste to get to his team.

"His name was Evan," Jack says, just as Ianto stumbles into their little circle. He grins at Ianto, clearly pleased with himself. "Hey there, Ianto. Good to see you."

Ianto scowls at him.

"What about you, Ianto?" Gwen asks curiously. "Who was your last snog?"

Shit.

Jack raises his eyebrows at Ianto, like he _knows_ that he's the last person Ianto snogged and he cannot wait to hear Ianto tell the team. Prat. Ianto can't wait to wipe the smug look off his face.

But when Ianto opens his mouth to give a name, the first one that comes to mind, Owen interrupts.

"Don't be stupid, Gwen," Owen snorts. "Like Ianto's ever been snogged. I bet he's still a virgi—"

"Thank you, Owen," Ianto interrupts, fixing him with a look, "for volunteering to fetch the firewood."

Owen gives him a disgruntled look.

Jack, in a fit of maturity, sticks his tongue out at Owen.

"Jack, you can go with him," Ianto adds, and takes perverse pleasure in the twin disgruntled expressions now being directed his way. That'll teach Jack to smirk at him.

ooo

They lose the SUV.

Up until that point, Jack had been enjoying himself. If nothing else, he'd figured that he'd find a way to share a tent with Ianto and convince him to zip their sleeping bags together when it got cold, and that alone would have justified this whole outing for Jack. But now the SUV is gone, and this trip is looking to be a whole lot less fun.

Ianto is pissed.

"Tosh, track the car," he orders, shoving his gun back into his holster before pushing a PDA into her hands.

Tosh immediately takes the device and sets to work.

Turning away from their destroyed campsite to face his team, Ianto stares at them with what Jack knows is a deceptively calm expression. "Does someone want to venture a guess as to how it's possible that someone else just drove away with our SUV?"

"They hot-wired it," Gwen says immediately.

"Telekinetic aliens?" Jack suggests.

"Not possible, and unlikely," Ianto says. "The SUV is well-protected against threats like those."

Silence.

"All right, all right," Owen says eventually. "It was me. I left the keys in the car. Happy?"

Ianto closes his eyes.

_Oh shit,_ Jack thinks, terror and excitement sizzling down his spine as he wonders if Ianto's actually about to lose control over this. The whole team has gone silent and Jack wonders if he's the only one holding his breath.

"We'll discuss safety procedures later," Ianto finally says, his voice the definition of control. He opens his eyes and doesn't even look at Owen. "Tosh, do you have a fix on the SUV?"

"Almost," says Tosh.

"What are we going to do, run after it?" Owen demands loudly. "S'gone, unless the little chavs crashed it already."

Owen sort of has a point, loathe as Jack is to admit it. What is Ianto hoping to accomplish by watching the SUV fly down the motorway? To make Owen feel more guilty?

"I highly doubt it was teenagers," Ianto replies, his tone now surprisingly mild. "What would they even be doing out here? It's miles to the nearest village."

"You think it was the aliens?" Gwen asks. "You think whatever's been taking those people—whatever killed that poor man in the woods—it drove away with our SUV?"

Jack tries to imagine some giant scorpion-like thing trying to fit into the driver's seat of the Hub, attempting to turn the keys in the ignition with a giant, unwieldy claw.

"Got it," Tosh says. "Sorry, I wasn't sure we had the right signal—the SUV's parked, 3.4 miles west of here. Who's got the map?"

Ianto's already got a map out and is unfolding it. Jack and the others cluster around him as Tosh points to the corresponding location of the SUV.

"There's a town, just there," Gwen says, pointing.

Ianto nods, but doesn't say anything.

It's quiet.

"Well, I smell a trap," Jack says eventually.

"Undoubtedly, it is one," Ianto says, folding up the map. "We'll be going anyway."

Jack stifles a groan.

ooo

On the walk, Jack treats them all to dirty American campfire songs, since it looks like they won't be having an actual campfire tonight.

Somewhere between "…_the ants go marching eight by eight, the little one stops to masturbate_…" and "…_on top of Old Sophie, all covered with jizz…_", though, Ianto starts to feel a bit twitchy about belting out songs as they trek quite possibly to their doom and orders Jack to stop about a mile out of the village.

When they finally come upon a building, Ianto sends Jack and Tosh off to fetch the SUV. He takes Owen and Gwen with him into the building, exploring first a pub on the first floor and then moving on to the apartments above. They move through one by one, finding a body in the first and a body in the second.

On the third, Gwen is shot.

Ianto fires right back without even thinking, and there's a thump as the body inside the apartment falls. He drops to the ground long enough to determine that Gwen's wound doesn't look fatal, yells for Owen, and then he storms inside the apartment. Finger tense on the trigger of his own gun, Ianto and kicks the rifle away from the body on the floor before he so much as glances at the body next to it.

The body looks human. Young. Male. He's still breathing, blood pooling in his stomach, eyes staring up at Ianto in shock.

A quick glance around the apartment reveals that it seems to be empty.

"Gwen? Gwen!" Owen yells, his voice getting louder as he approaches.

"She's been shot!" Ianto yells, as he crouches next to the fallen boy. Gun in the boy's field of vision, Ianto snarls at him, "Are there any others?"

"N-no," the boy stutters, wide-eyed. "I t-though you were th-them, I'm sorry, I'm so s-sorry…"

Fuck.

Fuck, he's gone a shot a civilian.

The boy's fading fast. Ianto knows exactly where his shot as gone, and he knows that the boy is going to die. If they could have called an ambulance, he'd have made it, but there's no way he'll be able to hang on long enough to get serious medical care to rural Wales. He has precious little time left of consciousness.

"Apartment's clear, Owen!" Ianto forces himself to call to Owen, before he turns back to the boy. "What's your name?" he asks, gentling his tone.

"Kieran," the boy gasps. "Am I gonna die? It hurts. It hurts, oh God, it hurts."

"No," Ianto says. "You're not going to die. You're going to be just fine. Tell me what's been happening."

"I want my mum," Kieran whimpers. He can't be older than twenty. "They weren't expecting me home this weekend, she won't know."

"Comin' through," Owen says, brushing past Ianto and Kieran with an armload of Gwen. "Get off the floor and help me!"

Ianto ignores him and wipes a tear away from the crease of Kieran's eye. "Kieran, I need you to tell me what's been happening. More people are going to die if you don't."

"I don't know," Kieran says, increasingly pale. "All I know is that it's—it's not human, it's too strong, too fast. And everyone's dead. Oh, God, they're all dead."

His breath is coming in shorter and shorter gasps.

Ianto gives him a few minute more of consciousness if he fights, an hour more to live with whatever supplies Owen's not used on Gwen, and twenty minutes if Ianto just leaves him there to die.

"You haven't seen it at all? Heard it?" Ianto presses.

Kieran shakes his head, sucking in shallow breaths of air.

"How come you survived?" Ianto asks.

"Barricade," Kieran says breathlessly.

He'll be out in seconds.

"Kieran," Ianto says gently, taking Kieran's hand, "thank you. You've been a great help. Now I want you to close your eyes and count to sixty for me, okay? And when you reach sixty, my friend Dr. Harper is going to be here and he'll fix you up."

"Okay," says Kieran, choking on every breath now.

He closes his eyes.

Ianto counts with him, and when he hits twenty-two he sees Kieran's face go slack and his breathing slow. He allows himself the luxury of ten more seconds of peace, whispers an apology, and then drops Kieran's hand and goes into the dining room where Owen's treating Gwen.

"What the fuck have you been doing?" Owen demands.

"Getting information," Ianto replies. "How's Gwen?"

"Still conscious, thanks very much," Gwen replies. "And I'll live to camp another day."

Ianto grins, slotting away his guilt over Kieran with an ease he knows is temporary. He glances out the window and is reminded of his other two team members.

"Tosh and Jack shouldn't be taking this long," he says, more to himself than anyone else.

"Keep your hair on, will you?" Owen says irritably as he starts applying a large white bandage to Gwen's side. "SUV's probably just locked up. What's this information you've got, anyway?"

"It's not much," Ianto says grimly. "But apparently it's not human, and everyone else in the village is dead. Barricading oneself in appears to be the only method of surviving it."

"And how the hell do you know all this?" Owen demands.

Ianto doesn't answer.

Minutes later, Owen discovers Kieran's body.

"What the fuck?" he demands over Gwen's horrified gasp, turning on Ianto with blazing eyes. "What the _fuck?_"

"He shot Gwen," Ianto replies evenly. "I took the first shot I had."

"You shoot to _disable_, you fucking—"

"This entire village has been killed off, Owen," Ianto interrupts. "On top of the seventeen reported disappearances around this area. As far as I'm concerned, this isn't a disabling situation. Yes, his death is unfortunate, but it's highly preferable to losing Gwen and myself to these creatures."

"He's not _dead_," Owen fumes, crouched over the body. "And as long as I'm here, he's going to stay that way. Now hand me my fucking medical kit before I give into the urge to shoot you."

ooo

Jack wakes and immediately gives a mental _no thank you_ and tries to slip back into unconsciousness. His head hurts, he's cold and dirty and lying on something mightily uncomfortable, and he can smell manure. Unfortunately, going back to sleep doesn't seem to be an option.

Reluctantly, Jack opens his eyes and takes in the sight of the earthy barn around him. Pushing himself up into a sitting position, he ignores the extra throb of pain his head delivers in retaliation for the movement.

The events leading up to this moment suddenly rush back to Jack—Tosh, looking for the SUV, the barn, the dead birds—and his hands immediately go for his gun—

"They took everything," Tosh's voice says from behind Jack, and Jack whips his head around to find her patting at a metal chute. She smiles at him. "Except my torch."

It's then that Jack realizes that his coat—his uncle's RAF greatcoat—is missing. All he's wearing are his jeans and his white t-shirt.

Dammit. He'd had just about _everything _in the pockets of that coat.

Patting down his body anyway, Jack discovers a piece of gum, an old receipt, and an ankle holster that no longer holsters anything. Useless. Over in the corner, he spies of a large ice hook that would make a nice weapon, and decides to keep an eye on it.

"Any idea where we are?" Jack asks, standing and surveying their prison.

"Underground," Tosh says, shrugging, because that much was obvious. "No immediate escape routes, but I'm not worried. I haven't met a cell yet I couldn't get out of."

Jack has an absolutely fantastic vision of Tosh as a cat burglar, in a full latex bodysuit, prowling through dark corridors and creeping across high beams. _Hot. _

He blinks and quickly focuses on the corner next to Tosh. Just behind the ice hook is a shoe.

Tosh has started moving down the wall, away from the chute, shining her torch and patting with her free hand as she goes.

Jack steps closer to the shoe, and squints into the gloom. There's something next to it, tucked further back, a lumpy pile that he can't quite make out. Returning to the shoe, his eyes begin to adjust to the dim lighting, and he makes out another shoe—and another—and—

"Tosh," Jack says with forced evenness. "Tosh, can you flash your light over here for a second?"

Tosh's light shines on the wall, waving around as it looks for the problem, until eventually she gets it down to the ground and the light illuminates a sizeable pile of shoes and clothing.

"My God," Tosh breathes, crossing the space. "There must be—dozens."

Jack crouches down in front of the pile, fixed on something sparkling, and he reaches for it. A child's shoe comes out of the pile, pink and glittery. The girl can't have been more than seven.

"What happened to them?" Tosh whispers, staring at the girl's shoe. "All those people..."

"I don't know," Jack replies, dropping the shoe, "but I sure as hell hope Ianto doesn't want these fuckers captured alive."

Tosh shakes her head and moves her torch away from the pile. "Is that a fridge?"

Jack looks up to see that it is, indeed, an ancient-looking refrigerator. Abruptly, he picks out the quiet hum of it running from the rhythm of sounds he's been hearing since he woke up.

Biting her lip, Tosh opens the door to the refrigerator slowly. Jack's on the side that the door opens on, so he can't see what's inside, but after a moment's pause Tosh slams the refrigerator shut again, wide-eyed.

"What's in there?" Jack asks, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"It's—body parts," Tosh replies. Her expression hasn't relaxed in the slightest when she turns her head to look at Jack. "We're food. That's what happened to those people, Jack. That's why there was nothing left on that body. We're food."

Well, thinks Jack. This isn't good_. _

ooo

They've barricaded themselves into the pub—Ianto, Owen, Gwen, and Kieran (the latter only because Gwen and Owen had stoutly refused to leave him behind, despite Ianto's insistence that Kieran would be dead in hours, and would only hinder them in the meantime). And barricaded in there, they'd had a few brief minutes in which they reviewed all that they knew, attempting to connect it to the information that had originally led them to come out here-but then the lights go out, and Gwen sees shadows in the windows.

"Little pig, little pig, let me come in," Owen says under his breath, gun at the ready.

"Not really the time, Owen," Gwen snaps from where she's standing in front of the cellar, which Ianto has boarded up as best he can.

"Not by the hairs of my chinny-chin-chin," Owen replies, smirking. "So I'll huff and I'll puff—"

Ianto flicks Owen on the back of his head without taking his eyes off the door. "Story time later, Owen."

The darkened pub is completely silent, all of them waiting breathlessly.

From the left, somewhere beyond the cellar, there's the sound of a door handle turning.

"Gwen," Ianto breathes, and Gwen steps back from the boarded-up, locked-up cellar door, training her gun on it.

There's a scraping sound of someone right against the door, but the cellar door doesn't move. There's a pause, and then the person on the other side thumps against the door. One of the boards loosens fractionally.

There's a pause, and then Ianto whirls around at the massive thump against the main door that sends their entire barricade shaking. A softer hit against the cellar door, and then another vicious go at the main door. A chair falls from their barricade. The toppling sas begun, the rest will follow, they'll have to hope that the pile of furniture will be heavy enough to keep the door from openi—

Another chair falls, revealing a glass pane in the door, and gunshots ring out.

Ianto fires back and dives for cover behind the bar, but Owen seizes his arm as they crouch and yanks furiously.

"We have to get the kid down!" Owen hisses, jerking his head at Keiran, who's laid out on the table next to the cellar, miraculously still alive.

After the last hour of Owen chewing him out over leaving Keiran for dead, Ianto knows that it's going to be useless to argue. He really needs to rethink 'stubborn' as a trait to look for when hiring.

"Fine," Ianto snaps, "but I'll get him, you stay down here."

Before Owen can protest, Ianto darts out from behind the bar and fires madly at the door, vaguely aiming for the shattered window panels, but his attention is focused on Kieran, this stupid boy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and had just _had_ to go a shoot Gwen when he should have been at uni with his stupid little friends. Stupid, stupid kid.

Reaching the table, which is far too close to the barricade for Ianto's liking, Ianto flicks the safety on his gun so he doesn't accidentally shoot the kid again while moving him, and gets his hands underneath his body—

Fiery, stabbing pain explodes in his leg, and Ianto can't help the bellow of pain as he crumples to the ground.

"Ianto!"

"Ianto!_ Ianto!_"

Gwen and Owen are both yelling for him, and Ianto can just barely discern their faces peeking out from their hiding spots.

But before Ianto can tell them to get their moronic arses back under cover, something grabs his legs and _pulls_.

Ianto tries to kick, but the pain in his leg is too great and he lets out another bellow of pain. He struggles to get to his gun, but he'd dropped it when he was shot and it's out of his reach—he's being dragged back—

"Ianto!" Gwen calls, horrified, coming out—

"Get _back!_" Ianto barks, scrambling to hold onto anything he can find, but there's nothing, just the floor, and he's already halfway under the barricade. "Owen, hold her back! I'll be fine, don't come after me, stay here—"

He's all the way back through the barricade and as the cold air hits him, he hears someone above him mutter an oath right before something slams into the back of his head and the world goes dark.

ooo

Jack and Tosh are led out of their underground prison at gunpoint, up into the cold night air. The woman seems to be as much of a prisoner as they are, making Jack wonder exactly what sort of set-up these aliens have got for themselves here in the middle of Bumfuck, Wales, but both his and Tosh's best offerings of help and protection do nothing to sway her.

She directs them into a large house. The lights are on, giving the impression of warmth and welcome, but the first thing Jack notices when he's prodded inside isn't the warmth but the _smell_. And then there are bodies, and body parts, and he can only stare in horror as Tosh demands to know who these creatures are, what they look like.

They get an answer. A horrible, awful answer.

"How else are we going to look?"

At the sound of the voice behind him, Jack whirls around to see an older man stepping around a pile of intestines, a smirk on his face as he crosses into the room, and everything slams into place in Jack's mind.

_Shapeshifters. _

God knows what these aliens actually are, but they've shifted into human form to blend in, and that's somehow even more sick because in a way it makes them cannibals. God, all those missing people…

He's jolted out of his thoughts when he sees the man and the woman kissing, and Jack suddenly realizes that he's been had. The woman's a shapeshifter, too—all that time, she was lying, and Jack had bought it hook, line and sinker.

Grabbing Tosh, Jack makes for the door, but before he can take more than two steps he's tackled to the ground by a massive weight—the male shapshifter—and his head is slammed into the ground, rendering him dizzy enough that he doesn't register the ropes around his wrists until it's been tied into place and he's been shoved to the side as Tosh is similarly tied up.

"They're not alone," the female shapshifter says. "There's others still out there."

"Oh, I know," the male replies. "I got one of 'em while I was out lookin' for the boy. Shot 'im in the leg, but other than that, 'e might just be one of our best yet."

Owen or Ianto. One of them is here, shot, possibly dead and one of those plastic-wrapped hanging bodies already.

"Let's see, then," the female shapeshifter says stoutly, pulling Tosh up and shoving her at Jack, who has only just gotten to his feet and nearly topples to the ground again.

The male shapeshifter makes his way across the room, past the table and the hanging bodies, and yanks up a body that Jack would know anywhere. He doesn't need the male shapeshifter to yank the bag off of his head, but even so, the sight underneath the bag makes Jack's stomach clench.

Ianto's head lolls. His face is bruised and bloodied, covered in dirt, and his mouth is gagged.

"Wake up!" the male shapeshifter barks, slapping Ianto across the face.

Jack winces.

Ianto blinks once or twice, before lifting his head to blink unfocused eyes around the room.

"_Very _nice," the female shapeshifter all but growls. "I see you've already got him tenderized, too."

"Oh, no," the male shapeshifter replies. "He just struggled on the way over, so I started in on his face a bit. Saved the rest for you, love."

"Tenderize?" Tosh demands. "Is that what you do before you string us up on meat hooks?"

Ianto's head whips in their direction, and his eyes widen as they connect with Jack's, blue on blue, terror on terror. For a moment, all Jack feels panic, but then Ianto blinks, and his eyes move toward the door. Then back to Jack. Then back to the door.

Jack shakes his head fractionally, furiously mouthing a "No!" back at Ianto.

Ianto's eyes are hard and his face is set.

Jack _won't_.

The sight of a bat being brought out distracts him, and he realizes that this window of opportunity is closing fast.

"Get ready to run," he breathes to Tosh, who responds with nothing more than the jerk of her head.

"Ought to do these two first right quick," the male says, approaching Tosh with the bat in hand. "Then we can take our time with the last one. Tenderize 'im..." He pauses, trailing his filthy hands down Tosh's finger even as she tries to jerk away. He smiles. "Proper-like."

Then the male moves on to Jack, who knows that this is it. This is the time.

The male smiles at him.

"Not with a hundred condoms," Jack says fervently.

The male blinks, temporarily thrown, and Jack seizes the opportunity.

He slams his head into the male's, knocking him back, and fights through the haze of agony in his head to swipe a leg out and hit the back of his knees, hard. The male stumbles forward, nearly losing his balance, and Jack gets behind him and knees him down into the ground hard.

Tosh is already through the plastic and on her way out.

"Ianto, go!" Jack yells as he charges the female, using the full extent of his body weight to ram her back into the wall. She pushes at him, but Jack's got a hefty weight advantage and pushes back with only his chest, then bashes his head into hers, sending her head slamming into the wall.

She slumps to the ground, unconscious.

Jack whirls, and sees Ianto still limp in his corner, but furiously working his gag off of his mouth. The male shapeshifter is picking himself up off the ground.

"Ghho!" Ianto yells, the word muffled by the gag. "Muhl'g, j'ghho!"

_My leg, just go!_

Jack goes to knock the male back down, but his limbs don't quite coordinate the way they should. His vision is swimming.

Perhaps those two knocks to the head had affected him, after all.

"_Ghho!_" Ianto screams.

Jack can't fight off the male shapeshifter again, and Ianto can't run with his leg, and Jack's really running out of time. And options. It seems unthinkable, but it's looking like his only option.

He meets Ianto's eyes for the briefest of moments, not able to say it out loud but thinking it with every fiber of his being: _I will come back for you_.

And then Jack turns and runs into the night.

ooo

Ianto watches Jack flee from the house as the man picks himself up from the floor and the woman begins to stir. His leg throbs. It's well on its way to healing, but not enough that he'd be able to walk on it—and anyway, when they kill him, he'll come back and have the element of surprise.

"Fuck!" the man spits, one hand clutching the table as he catches his breath.

The woman groans.

"Get up," the man barks at her, as he seizes a huge knife off the counter. "Get the others!"

The woman nods and pushes herself up off the ground slowly.

Ianto feels a surge of pride that Jack has done all this with his hands literally tied behind his back. He isn't sure that, given the same situation, he could have done the same. Ianto's more than good at hand-to-hand combat, but Jack's brain isn't as analytical, and he's also got a considerable advantage when it comes to size.

The man is approaching Ianto with the rifle. But that's okay, because Jack and Tosh are safe.

If he and Jack get out of this alive, Ianto is going to… do something for him. He doesn't know what. Not brew him a cup from his special brew, that's entirely too personal—maybe use the Fraaxian air-blaster in the archives to clean Jack's favorite gun or something.

It's that thought—the thought of the look on Jack's face when he sees his newly-cleaned gun—that Ianto fades out to, because the man rams the butt of the gun into his head and Ianto is instantly out cold.

ooo

Jack breathes very carefully, very quietly, in and out through his mouth. He's flattened against the wall of the building that they'd first come upon, the place where they'd split up, and is attempting to use a nail sticking out of one of the boards to cut the ropes binding his wrists. He moves up and down, trying to saw the rope with the dull point of the nail, and he has no idea whether or not it's working.

He'd heard shouting in the woods just a few minutes ago, and he prays that it wasn't Tosh. He's been lucky enough to avoid being recaptured, if only because as soon as his wrists are free he's going to go back for Ianto.

Jack's trying to think of a smart way to do that—without much success—when he hears someone inside the building and his blood runs cold.

"Bloody—fuck, no, no, no—come back, you stupid little sod—_fuck_."

Jack relaxes.

Even whispered, he'd know that mouth anywhere.

Abandoning the nail, Jack approaches the door. He can hear quiet rustling through the broken panes of glass in the door.

"Owen!" Jack hisses. "Owen, it's Jack!"

"Fuck!" Owen swears. "Well, there goes ten years of my life. Jesus."

"Let me in. My hands are tied behind my back."

"Where's Tosh?" Owen asks, through the sound of furniture being shifted. He must have barricaded the door.

"I don't know," Jack admits.

There's a pause in the shifting.

"We were both captured, and we escaped, but I didn't see which way she ran—but listen, they've got Ianto," Jack says urgently, panic flooding his veins as he remembers the shapeshifter's grin at the thought of tenderizing Ianto. "We have to go and get him before they kill him."

The door finally swings open, revealing a blood-spattered Owen.

"Not mine," Owen says quickly, at Jack's alarmed look. "It's some kid's. Our trigger-happy idiot of a boss accidentally shot him, and I've been trying to keep him alive all night. Stupid sod just died on me."

Ianto accidentally killed a civilian.

Jack pushes the thought out of his mind, focusing on more important things.

"Where's Gwen?" he asks, looking around the dim pub as he steps inside.

"She went after Ianto, hasn't come back," Owen replies grimly. "Here, I'll get something to cut that rope."

"They didn't have her when I escaped, and that was only ten or fifteen minutes ago," Jack says. He thinks. It's been hard to get a feel for the passage of time.

"What the hell are they, then?" Owen asks. There's the tinkle of broken glass being moved around, and then he emerges from behind the bar with a glinting shard in his hand. "And what are they doing with those people?"

Jack swallows. "They're—shapeshifters, as far as I can tell. They look and sound completely human. I only saw two of them, but there might be more…"

"There must be," Owen agrees. He begins sawing on the rope binding Jack's hands with harsh, quick strokes.

"They've been eating people," Jack says.

Owen pauses. "Sorry. They _what?_"

"There's a building that's been turned into a slaughterhouse, on the other side of the village. There are bodies hanging from the ceiling, slabs of meat, intestines in jars, organs laid out to dry… And there's a fridge full of packed—cuts. Of meat."

"Fuck," Owen swears, and with a particularly vicious jab, Jack's wrists spring apart as the rope breaks. "Only in the bloody countryside. They've still got Ianto?"

"Yeah," Jack says. "But they wanted to, uh, tenderize him first, so we've still got a bit of time. What weapons have you got?"

He rubs at his left wrist and begins to work off the rope, ignoring the sting in his shoulders.

"Well, I've got my gun, Ianto's gun, and a rifle. I'm guessing you've got nothing?"

"I've got rope," Jack offers, holding up the rope he'd gotten free from his left wrist. When Owen isn't impressed, he tosses it aside and makes quick work of the rope around his right wrist.

"Right. Here."

Jack takes Ianto's gun and tries not to think of the 'tenderizing' that Ianto must be undergoing right now.

"I just loaded it up with the spare clip from my med kit," Owen tells him. "And there's no telling how many bullets we'll need to take out these fuckers."

"They went down pretty easily when Tosh and I escaped, so I don't think they'll be too resilient," Jack says.

Owen nods. He tucks his gun into the back of his pants before taking up the shotgun.

Jack fingers Ianto's gun. He'll be going for kill shots, and the hell with Torchwood Three's alien-hugger policies. If anyone has a problem with it, Jack will kindly direct them to the sparkly pink children's shoes that he'd found in the bottom of that barn.

Finally prepared, he and Owen set out into the night, Jack leading the way back to the slaughterhouse.

Halfway there, he spots the tractor.

ooo

Ianto is in agony. His ribs are broken but not to the point where they've punctured his lungs and will kill him—unfortunately—and he's fairly certain that they've cracked his femur, though that pain is nowhere near as bad as the pain in the leg that was shot. They'd taken a particular interest in beating that part of him with the bat, insisting that they had to bleed out the bad blood to salvage the meat.

They'll bleed him soon. Ianto wonders how long it'll take him to come back.

He hopes that it's before they string his body up on a meat hook. Coming back with a hook driven through his back would not be pleasant. Then again, he imagines that coming back after he's already been cut up and dried out might be worse. Ianto's never been butchered before. There's no telling what that resurrection would be like.

In theory, Ianto thinks morbidly, his body is a never-ending source of meat. He could feed a village of cannibals all by himself for years—decades, even. Huh. He's never thought of that before. He—

But then there's sounds, footsteps, and Tosh's voice asking, "Where's Ianto? What have you done to him?"

Oh, God. Not Tosh.

Ianto chokes on a gasp of pain as he's yanked up off the floor, and winces at the light that floods his vision when the bag is snatched off of his head.

"Wake up," the man says, grinning down at him. "Time to be bled."

Behind Tosh is Gwen.

No Jack. No Owen.

But they've got Tosh and Gwen, and Ianto knows that as soon as he's been bled they're going to tenderize and bleed them as well, and there's no telling whether or not he'll come back in time to save them. He could come back to their dead broken bodies.

The man grabs Ianto's hair and forces his head back, baring his throat.

"Like veal, it takes a long time," the man says, holding a meat cleaver to Ianto's throat. "But it definitely makes the meat taste better."

"No!" Gwen shouts, and Ianto hears the subsequent smack. But it's Gwen—stubborn, passionate Gwen—so it of course does no good. "Don't you touch him, don't you dare—"

Ianto feels the sharp sting as the blade slices across his neck, and the warm rush of blood as it spills down his chest. The man must have nicked an artery. He's going to bleed pretty quickly, if the man has, which is much more preferable than the ten-to-fifteen minute bleed-out that the man had apparently been fantasizing about.

"Ianto! Help him, please help him—Ianto!"

Gwen's cries fade out quickly as Ianto begins to lose consciousness. A quick death, indeed.

Strange. He thinks he hears a rumbling—a crash—but it's all so fuzzy and dark that Ianto thinks he might have actually just imagined it.

ooo

In what is possibly Jack's best dramatic entrance ever, he rams a tractor through the side of the wall.

Talk about the element of surprise.

He has only a split second to take in the scene of what seems to be at least half a dozen of the shapeshifters all gathered around the butchering area, Gwen and Tosh on their knees and bound, staring at the tractor with alarm, and Ianto—

Jack's heart stops.

Ianto's throat has been slit and there's blood everywhere. His eyes are blank. His skin is pale. He isn't moving.

Ianto is dead.

Jack shoots the man holding the knife first, right in the forehead, without even thinking. He'd killed Ianto. He'd _killed_ Ianto. Even as Jack sees the man fall he spins and shoots the female next, the one who had lied to him and Tosh, and he gets her in the chest. If he'd gotten away from her, he could have saved Ianto. He fires again, catching a man in the side.

Maybe he's the one who shot Ianto.

Jack fires again, catching the man higher in the chest this time but not in the heart. He's not dead yet. Jack fires again, and again, and finally the man stops moving.

Next to him, Owen tosses the rifle aside and pulls out his shotgun.

"Stop! Jack, Owen, stop it! Stop it!"

Jack barely registers Gwen's pleas.

"Jack, they're _human!_"

What?

Jack is so startled that he nearly drops the gun, his head whipping around to stare at Gwen.

_No_, his mind insists. _No, they can't be. Humans couldn't do this. _

"They're shapeshifters, Gwen," Jack spits.

"They're human!" Gwen cries, tears spilling down her cheeks. "Jack, they're the villagers. They told us. Every ten years, the whole village—they're just villagers—they're _humans_."

"_They killed Ianto!_" Jack roars, and he fires another bullet into the man he sees reaching for a gun. He feels tears rising up in his throat as it sinks in that Ianto is dead.

Ianto is _dead_.

He screams inarticulately and fires his gun at nothing, at the shapeshifters, at the humans, at whatever they are. He fires again, and again, and again, still screaming, not even aiming his gun anymore, until the gun is empty and Jack finds himself hyperventilating and on his knees.

Ianto's dead. He's dead and it's all Jack's fault.

"Jack, mate—"

Jack shakes his head and stumbles over to Ianto on his hands and knees, not caring that he has no right to do this. Ianto was never his. He'd thought maybe, one day, had visions of Ianto loving him as much as Jack loved Ianto, thought of telling Ianto how he'd saved Jack again and again, thanking him for Gray, for Myfanwy, for making him realize how much more of a person he could be, for—

And now it's all gone.

Ianto is gone.

"Jack," Owen's voice says sharply, just as Jack has reached Ianto and his dead, dead eyes. "He's gone. He's gone and we—"

Ianto's whole body seizes and all of a sudden his face is alive, his eyes widening and his mouth sucking in a huge gasp of air. His eyes are wide and terrified, his body struggling against the bindings on his wrists for a minute before he seems to come back to himself.

Alive.

Jack would think he was hallucinating, if it weren't for Tosh's scream and Owen's shouted, "Buggering fuck!"

"No," Jack breathes, staring at live, live, wonderfully _alive_ Ianto and not even daring to move for fear of making his vision vanish. "No, no, no, no…"

Ianto's throat is virtually unmarked.

Ianto finally notices them, and he stills. His eyes move to each of them in turn, and when it's Jack's turn all he sees is a grief and terror that make him want to go to Ianto, pull him into his arms and never, ever, ever let him go—but Jack feels like he's been frozen to the spot. Eventually Ianto looks away and takes in the sight of the dead villagers.

Shapeshifters.

Humans.

_Humans_.

"Can one of you take care of these cuffs?" Ianto finally asks, quite politely.

"You were dead," Owen says unevenly.

"Yes," says Ianto. "And now I'm not. I promise I'll answer your questions later, but right now, I need to get out of these handcuffs, and we need to see if we can keep any of these people alive long enough for an ambulance to get out here."

Oh, God.

Ianto was dead, and now he's not. Apparently this is a common thing. Like Ianto always comes back from the dead. Like he's been doing this for years, decades, centuries even.

Oh, God. Ianto's _immortal_.

ooo

His team are very obviously on the brink of falling apart.

They hold it together long enough for the police to show up with ambulances in tow for the three villagers that Jack and Owen hadn't killed. Ianto hands them all over to the paramedics before going to get the SUV.

When he returns, he finds Owen slumped against the side of the ambulance, looking exhausted. He's the only uninjured one of the team, not counting Ianto, but he's done his job twice-over today as a medic and a field agent, so the exhaustion is well-earned.

"Courtesy of the neighboring police department," Ianto says, passing him a foam cup of coffee. "It's not great, but it'll do."

Owen accepts it and drinks half of it in one gulp.

"That kid died, you know," Owen tells him.

Ianto feels a rip of guilt through his chest, but he forces it back for later.

"I tried my best, but he died anyway," Owen says. "You were right. Of course, it's probably pretty easy to write off his life when it's clearly not something you ever need to worry about yourself."

Ianto really, really doesn't want to do this right now.

"It's never easy to write off a lost life," he says evenly. "I'm not a monster, Owen."

Owen snorts, and takes another sip of the coffee.

"It's my job to make sure that this team stays alive to help as many people as we can," Ianto says, even though he knows it's a lost cause. "That means I have to make tough decisions sometimes."

"Whatever. Not like it's on my conscious. I'm gonna go check on Jack," Owen says, before striding away brusquely.

ooo

Ianto fetches another cup of coffee goes to Gwen, now, who is huddled under a grey blanket with a blank look on her face.

"Coffee," Ianto says, offering it to her.

Gwen takes it, still looking lost, and drinks it almost automatically. "Those people," she whispers hoarsely, not looking at Ianto. "I don't understand. I don't understand how they can do that. All of them."

Ianto sits down next to her and gently takes her hand, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles. Gwen is so innocent, so… untarnished. Normally, it simultaneously fascinates and annoys Ianto, but right now it just makes him feel very, very old.

"Jack killed them of all," Gwen says hollowly, turning to look at Ianto. "He and Owen. All of them."

"They were about to kill you," Ianto reminds her gently.

"They _did_ kill you," Gwen says, blinking at Ianto confusedly. "You were dead. And then you just—you came back."

"I know," Ianto says. "I'm sorry."

"When Jack saw you," Gwen says, her eyes glazing over again. "Dead, I mean. When he saw you dead. I tried to tell him that he was killing people, but he thought they were aliens. He kept insisting. And then he just—it the most horrible scream. And he started shooting, just shooting, and when he ran out of bullets he fell to the floor and started to shake."

The image plays out in Ianto's mind, and he feels regret rising up in his throat like vomit.

"I thought he was wrong to kill those people, but now I—I don't know."

"It's not always black and white," Ianto offers, knowing it's a useless platitude. It doesn't really matter. He doesn't think Gwen's registering most of this conversation anyway.

Gwen doesn't respond, staring off into space again.

"Drink," Ianto urges.

Gwen blinks, and then smiles slightly before taking a sip.

"You're always ready with a hot beverage after everything falls apart, aren't you?" she asks him.

"Nothing better for the soul," Ianto tells her.

He gives her hand a final squeeze, and then goes to fill another cup of coffee.

ooo

Ianto finds Tosh next, huddled under a grey blanket identical to the one Gwen has. There are bandages on her wrists, and she stares at him, wide-eyed.

"How are you?" Ianto asks softly, passing her a hot cup of coffee.

"Fine," Tosh says blankly. She blinks. "You—you came back. How did you come back?"

"Drink that," Ianto urges her gently. "It'll help."

Robotically, Tosh takes a sip.

"I don't know how it works," Ianto tells her gently. "And I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner."

Tosh opens her mouth to say something, then closes it and takes a long drink from her cup.

"It's okay, you know," she says eventually, finally daring to look him in the eye. "I mean, I'm upset, but you're still my boss. You're still a hero, Ianto."

It hits Ianto like a punch in the gut, but he forces it down like every other emotion he's dealt with tonight and forces himself to smile.

"Thank you, Tosh," he says.

"I'm sorry I left you behind," she says, sounding slightly miserable now. She looks him in the eye when she says it, because she's Tosh and she's brave and honest like that.

"Tosh," Ianto says, not breaking their gaze, "in that sort of situation, the only thing I _ever_ want you to do is run as fast as you can. I mean, you saw tonight—I'll always be okay."

Tosh bites her lip, and then hesitantly nods. She averts her eyes, now.

"Finish your drink," Ianto instructs, and she automatically takes a long gulp. "I'll come and let you know when we're ready to go."

Three down. One to go. Ianto's been saving the best for last.

ooo

Jack doesn't have a blanket. Or rather, he does, but it's crumpled on the ground by his feet.

"I think this belongs to you," Ianto says, holding out the folded navy greatcoat that the police had recovered and delivered to him upon his request.

Jack looks up, and his eyes widen at the sight of his beloved coat. He takes it carefully and settles it on his lap, hugging it to his stomach. "Thanks."

"And, a cup of coffee," Ianto adds, presenting the cup to Jack.

Jack takes it wordlessly.

Ianto waits.

"Were they really human?" Jack finally asks.

"They were," Ianto confirms. "Horrible humans, but humans they were."

Jack shakes his head and doesn't say anything more, staring at the ground.

"Jack?" Ianto finally asks tentatively.

"You're not even human, are you?" Jack says with a mirthless laugh. He looks up at Ianto. "All this time, and you're not even human."

"Oh, for—_what_ is so great about being human, Jack?" Ianto demands, because he is just a little bit fucking _sick and tired_ of this shit. "What the hell do humans have that no other species in the galaxy could ever hope to have? Is it cannibals? Is it corruption? Is it people who are so power-mad that they actually rip holes through reality and sentence eight hundred people to horrific deaths?"

Jack flinches—actually flinches—and Ianto forcibly reels himself back in.

"I am human, Jack," Ianto says, in a level tone now. "But there are many, many days where I'm not proud of that. And if your version of love is confined to something so trivial as species, then it's something I have no interest in taking part of."

Jack's eyes widen. "No, Ianto, I didn't mean—"

"It doesn't matter what you meant," Ianto interrupts. "Drink your coffee. I'll come and get you when we're ready to go."

And with that, he spins on his heel and leaves

ooo

Jack thinks about going after Ianto—there are words of apology and anger simultaneously bursting to leave his mouth—but in the end he can't bring himself to, and Ianto's already stalked off.

He hadn't meant it like that, he hadn't.

He'd just been—

"Fuck," Jack mutters.

Desperate to be free of his head, he casts around for something to look at. His eyes first find Owen, who's nodding off against the SUV, and then they find Gwen, who's also on the verge of falling asleep, a white foam cup in danger of falling from her hand.

The idea strikes Jack like a lightning bolt.

But it's impossible. No. Ianto wouldn't. He _wouldn't_.

Jack moves his cup of coffee into a beam of light from the ambulance, but he sees only the faintest hints of a foreign oil lingering on the top of the coffee. It could very well be his imagination.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Would Ianto really…

He might. Jack doesn't know. He's seen Ianto's ruthless side often enough, and he knows that Ianto loves nothing more than his own secrets, but he's also seen Ianto reveal them when the situation warranted it, and then deal with the consequences—namely, Gray—and it all leaves Jack confused.

Better safe than sorry.

Jack dumps out the coffee.

ooo

_You're still a hero, Ianto. _

The words make Ianto feel a little bit nauseous. Like there are snakes squirming in his belly. Like the only way to get rid of them is to twist himself inside out.

Tosh, sweet Tosh, has no idea what sort of hero Ianto Jones is not.

Tomorrow, his team will wake up and remember blood, and bodies, and gunshots, and a permeating sense of horror. They will not remember their boss gasping back to life. And now, driving home his slumbering team as the sun rose over the Welsh countryside, Ianto cannot find a good reason for that.

He'd panicked—this much is retrospectively obvious. One of his most precious secrets had been torn away from him, and Ianto had retconned his entire team to get it back. And it had been _easy_.

Ianto regrets it with ever fiber of his being, almost more than he dreads any one of his team breaking through the retcon and knowing exactly what Ianto has done, exactly how little he trusts. Almost. Not enough to actively try to break the retcon, and not enough to just up and tell his team that he's immortal.

It's a combination of cowardice and ego and habit.

Some days, Ianto really doesn't want to find the Doctor again. He doesn't think the Doctor would be very proud of the man that Ianto has become.

ooo

Jack's suspicions are confirmed the day after they get back from the Brecon Beacons. Neither Gwen, nor Owen, nor Tosh seem to have any memory of Ianto coming back to life.

Jack doesn't know what he's going to do about this situation, because he really doesn't see any way that this won't end in disaster.

- fin -

Sequel coming sometime in the next two weeks, whenever I get around to writing it. Thanks for reading!


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